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Periscope! Why Not-for-Profits Need to Use It

Periscope lets you live stream whatever you are doing directly from your cell phone to the world. Not only that, viewers of your live stream are able to comment and interact with you in real-time as you stream. The iOS and Android phone apps launched last spring and have been steadily gaining traction since. Periscope follows a growing trend of more and more live streaming of events, games, etc. The trend began with sports (on major league baseball’s platform) and video games (on services such as Twitch) but now have moved more into everyday use. The important thing to note is that your phone has become a mobile broadcast studio. This is going to change a lot of things in our world.

Right now the broadcasts on Periscope (and its main rival Meerkat) remind me a lot of the early days of podcasting about ten years ago. The content isn’t great, as the earliest adopters don’t necessarily have broadcasting knowledge or experience (although I’ve noticed some tv personalities have taken it up), but there is a lot of enthusiasm around its practitioners. You can tour foreign cities as users walk around or just follow along as people live their everyday lives. Periscope is owned by Twitter and works seamlessly with it, allowing you to announce your live streams via your Twitter feed and take advantage of the Twitter following you’ve already built up.

When I learned about Periscope at its launch, my first thought was “what a great way for not-for-profits to show their work.” Every not-for-profit’s biggest challenge is engaging people with their work in meaningful ways. This can be especially challenging if the beneficiaries of a not-for-profit’s work are in hard to reach places or are even abroad. Periscope lets you bring those experience directly to the donor or prospective donor as well as to a wider audience. Even though the recording of the live stream is only archived for 24 hours, you can save videos on your phone or use services such as Katch allow you to keep it longer and distribute the video to an audience that wasn’t able to join you live. The Central Park Conservancy regularly periscopes tours of Central Park.

Your live streaming doesn’t have to end with just your client work. What about streaming an event (like a $5K run or your gala), an interview with one of your program staff, a panel discussion, or even a board meeting? The opportunities are many and can be especially powerful because of Periscopes’ ability to take questions and comments live. This isn’t just passive watching of video; this is active engagement with your donors and potential donors. And you can do it all with your phone.

What ideas do you have for Periscope? Let us know if you’ve tried this fantastic new tool.